Page 45 of The Thrice-Bound Fool

“Well?” she said.

“Now how do you like it? Not getting answers, I mean.”

She stared at me.

“An enigma is a mystery.”

“Ah.”

A few more steps.

“Well?” I said.

The monkeys, who were almost out of sight, now moved quickly across the hill, silhouetted against the greeny-gray sky for a moment, then settled down on another rock to watch us. Two of them quarreled briefly over who got to sit higher.

“The story is about a witch who turned her old lovers into bears. Once, there was a knight who heard of this witch, a woman of great beauty, who lived in the mountains. The shepherds spoke of her when they went to market to trade wool, for there are many sheep in Montabrecola. And the towns there are small, but they know much of dyeing, and the best cloaks and stockings come from there.”

She stopped for a moment, and I sensed I shouldn’t goad her this time.

“This knight, he asked about the witch at the market, and he was told to follow this or that path, and so he did. The forest on the mountainside was thick and dark, as they always are in such stories. On the way to her house, he met a bear, who challenged him, but he drew his sword, and the bear moved away. Then a larger bear came and roared at him, but this bear, too, he drove from the path. A third bear tried to bite him, but he stabbed it in the shoulder, and it ran away.”

“And then he met the witch,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Things always come in threes in old stories.”

“Yes. He met the witch.”

“And they made love.”

“They did,” Galva said.

“And in the morning, he woke up to discover that he was a bear, and later, he tried to warn another man, but he could only make bear sounds, and the geezer drew a sword on him.”

“You’ve heard this story, then?”

“No, I fucking haven’t. You fucking told me this was about a witch who turned her lovers into bears, didn’t you?”

“I should not have said this first.”

“No, you great Spanth wanker, you shouldn’t have.”

Now one of the monkeys was coming down the hill toward us.

“They’re sending an ambassador,” I said.

The little thing came down the rocks and dry grass using its arms for balance, it was quite entertaining to watch. I noticed Galva smiling, too.

“Your queen had a monkey, right? Did it look like these karkers?”

“No. It was a different kind. Smaller. Its hair was shorter, and it had no red ass.”

It stood about twenty steps from us.

I still had my bow at the ready.

It looked at me and gestured with its hand as if patting the air.